French police attempt to find a stolen letter being used for political blackmail by employing deductive reasoning.

Pepe Torres takes his first trip to town from his isolated farm and kills a drunken man in an argument. He flees to the mountains but succumbs to peril.

Man can move easily enough in the three dimensions of space - why not the fourth: Time? An intriguing after-dinner conversation takes an unexpected turn when the host produces a small machine, which promptly disappears into thin air. It has been sent into the future, he says. Or maybe the past. As his skeptical guests try to fathom what they have seen, the host unveils a full-size machine, nearing completion. At a similar gathering one week later...

First published in The Saturday Evening Post, The Ransom of Red Chief is a humorous short story written in 1910 by O. Henry. A pair of con men kidnap and attempt to ransom a prominent Alabama citizen's son. Immediately they find themselves at the mercy of a particularly spoiled and clever boy who begins driving them mad. The ironic ending remains the story's most enduring feature.

Swift ironically proposes feeding Irish children to England's rich absentee landlords.